Top 4 Influencers of IoT Application Development

Just like any other field in the technological industry, the Mobile Application Development is changing and evolving with a swift. Doesn’t matter if you are running a huge business or a small one, developing an application for the services that you offer to your customers has become an essential part of the business model. Furthermore, if you develop an app using the Internet of Things (IoT) technology, it just improves your product/service quality. Hope it’s enough to boost your revenues and create brand value among your customer base.

Before proceeding further to “how to design and develop apps for IoT”, let’s have a brief about “what is IoT”.

The IoT (Internet of Things) is the network of real-world things that let them communicate with each other. It is a system of interrelated objects able to collect and transfer data without human intervention. IoT rests upon these three major pillars-

1. Network:
   The network plays the same role as the routers in connecting the network to the device. Here, the devices are linked to the cloud. The information is received from the data centers.
2. Cloud: The cloud helps in securing the confidential data. When the devices get connected to the cloud, all the data being fetched goes directly to the cloud.
3. Things/Objects: The Things in themselves sometimes can act as an IoT Gateway and communicate with other devices using protocols. What it communicates is the data ingested by sensors from the real-world things/objects.

WHAT IOT FACTORS INFLUENCES THE IOT APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT?

IoT is demanding software developers to gain a thorough understanding of the technology with the help of mobile apps. They might need to look out for new ways to connect the apps with the things if traditional methods such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth do not work.

Although the technology involved the usage of the smart devices, tracking them in real-time was also important. To track the activities of smart devices, developing a mobile application was a priority.

But while developing an IoT mobile application, the following factors are required to be considered-

1. Data Collection and security:
   With the help of IoT gateways, IoT endpoints embedded with sensors ingest data from things/objects and transmit the data through the network. It is a sheer responsibility of the developer that a strong security environment is given to the IoT data, which is collected from various sources so that it is protected from any cyber-attack. Therefore, when developing a customized IoT Application, it is very much important to think of the security and integrity of the data.
2. IoT Platform: An integrated IoT platform is the most important part in the development of an IoT application. As building the app from scratch is a time-consuming task, many developers use already existing IoT platforms which comes with a high-security level. The IoT platforms have helped in the integration of the data collected from various sources which further help in transferring, storing and processing data. These platforms have special tracking chips which help in tracking the location of goods at any particular stage of delivery. Any IoT Platform is a full-fledged infrastructure of agnostic platforms which includes file hosting, cloud computing, virtual servers and much more. Security, Flexibility, and adaptability are few of the major benefits of the IoT integrated platforms.
3. Scalability: The Internet of Things based applications should be scalable. As the technologies keep changing so does the IoT too, it is well predicted that Internet of Things has an immense potential and will become larger than ever with the time. With the increasing number of connected devices, there will be more ingested data from devices. More scalable an IoT App is, more are the chances that it will last or sustain for a longer period of time.
4. Speed and Quality: Being a developer, one should not compromise on the speed and quality of an IoT application. As developing an IoT Application is majorly transforming ideas into reality, the prototype of an IoT Application should be stable enough.

MEASURING THE COST OF IOT APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

The complexity of the product majorly decides the cost of an application. Apart from this, the cost of an application is also dependent on the size of the application, its features, and its functionality. To have an insight, the following factors decide the cost of an IoT Application:

1. Hardware:
   More is the complexity of an Integrated IoT Solution, more is the cost. The increasing usage of IoT devices and the connected apps that use cameras, sensors, smart locks, and other intelligent technologies increase the cost of an IoT App.
2. Application Cost:
   Again, just like hardware, the cost of an IoT Application totally depends on the size and complexity of the Application. So, the cost of the IoT app will be in direct relationship with the complex app requirement.
3. Infrastructure:
   Cost of the infrastructure plays a key role in the development of an application. The infrastructure directly affects the total cost of IoT application development. Infrastructure cost includes the cost of the complicated support systems and gadgets.

FINAL WORDS:

Well, in view of the relevance of the Internet of Things, there are many tools which help in the development of an IoT application and the application developers can leverage them. Also, the money spent on IoT development until now has paved the way for the better IoT application development, potentially IoT Application Development will continue to be the major contributor to worldwide Application Development.